You can totally ignore the title of this entry. I started it a couple nights ago, some blather where I wondered to myself just how did the cavepeople deal with their screaming cave-babies without attracting every sabre-toothed tiger in the neighborhood. Except then I got distracted and saved it for later, and now I don't remember where I was going with it or what my point was. So sorry. You don't get to read that bit of cleverness from me. Let's talk about something else.
At this moment, I've got little dude sleeping in the sling which is slung round my big daddy shoulders. It's always cool when he does that, because I'll tell ya, he doesn't always. All the sling advocates out there in the parenting advice world make baby-slinging sound like this magical, wonderful, and best of all, easy means of keeping your child close and relaxing him. Put sling on, insert baby, boom, you win parent of the year. Well even though my kid speaks not a LICK of English, he informed me in so many words that this is not so. The whole sling thing takes work, it's not always easy, and he's definitely not always okay with it. Sometimes he is very not okay with it. But right now, right as I type this, he's in there, and he's cool. And that is just how it is.
Today is Ash's 30th birthday. Mine is in another month. We've got one of her sisters lined up to babysit for a couple of hours while we go gorge ourselves on some sushi, a pleasure that she denied herself all throughout pregnancy. I'm not sure how I feel about turning 30. I mean, I'm not all freaked out like oh shit, I'm getting so unspeakably old, I need a sports car and a line of credit at the Sharper Image and some eighteen year olds STAT. That's not til 40, right? ;) But it's not the increasing age that I'm concerned with, it's more the person that I continue to become as I age. The guy I am now is not the guy I intended to become 5, 10 years ago, but for the most part, I like the guy I am now, and I recognize that the guy I intended to become back then, while he had a lot going for him, he was kind of a judgmental shallow jackass, not anyone that I'm sure I'd like to be (except perhaps for the writing plays for a living part, that would be alright I guess). Anyway, mayhaps I'll reflect back on this more when my 30th rolls around in January.
My biggest accomplishment as of late: to gain the ability to maintain a state of relative calm whilst the biscuit screams his little head off. Not like I'm some Zen master or anything, this skill only applies to my baby and my baby alone. I'm sure the Ash has attained this to a greater degree than I since she spends more time with him during the day, and I'm also sure that anybody else's kid screaming would be like a million fingernails scraping a million chalk boards. And it's not like he doesn't know how to scream, as I'm quite sure I've already suffered more permanent hearing loss than from all the concerts I've ever been to combined. Nor is this ability permanent, as it can wear off. I would liken it unto the shields on the fighter ships in Star Wars. They'll only hold for so long because the technology is imperfect, much like my cool will only last for so long because I am, surprise, imperfect. All the same, if I can keep cool long enough to help little dude get through his cranky patch, and maybe a little of my calm rubs off on him, then I have done something right.
Oogah boogah.
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